<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>A Changed Man by Cookies_and_Chaos</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28594026">A Changed Man</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cookies_and_Chaos/pseuds/Cookies_and_Chaos'>Cookies_and_Chaos</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Cobra Kai (Web Series)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 06:55:03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>411</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28594026</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cookies_and_Chaos/pseuds/Cookies_and_Chaos</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Daniel had a lot to think about after his time in Okinawa. Written for the 12 Days of Christmas Challenge 2020, Day 10, "Ten Important Thoughts".</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>12 Days of Christmas Challenge 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>A Changed Man</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Returning home should have been a triumphant journey but Daniel couldn't shake the uncertainty and doubt clouding at the edge of his thoughts.</p><p>Chozen.</p><p>Of all the people Daniel had never expected to see again, Chozen Toguchi was pretty damn close to the top of that list. He had also been pretty close to the top of the 'never want to see again' list in Daniel's head as well. The skipping beat of Daniel's heart, the panic in his chest, the flashes of the fight in his mind's eye... Daniel might as well have been right back there, fighting for his life, when he first set eyes on Chozen. He'd clenched his fists and readied himself for a fight.</p><p>A fight that never came because his instincts were wrong.</p><p>On the other side, having spent the day with Chozen, learning about a side of Miyagi-Do that Daniel would never have guessed existed, Daniel could rationalise where he had gone so wrong. Emotions and memories had taken over and he had forgotten that thirty years had passed. Thirty years where everyone grew and changed. Just because some people had only changed for the worse didn't mean they all had.</p><p>Before this trip, when Daniel had thought about Chozen, it had only ever been when he retold stories of the time he had fought for his life. Chozen had, like Kreese and Silver and Barnes, become little more than an antagonist in a closed chapter of his life. Unlike Kreese, Chozen had gone on to write more positive chapters in his own life's book. Daniel would have missed all of that if he hadn't listened to Kumiko.</p><p>Now that he had time to think on it, and he had plenty of time on the flight home, Daniel wondered if he had missed how other people had been trying to write better chapters in the story of their life. He wondered if he had been too quick to judge Johnny and a begrudging thought nudged at him, whispering that he owed the man a second chance. Or third chance. Maybe it was forth...</p><p>That didn't matter. What mattered was that Daniel had been letting the corrosion from Kreese seep outwards, contaminating everything around him, forgetting that everyone was trying to work through the pages of their life and that sometimes everyone, himself included, got caught up in the drama and poor decisions. That didn't make them the bad guys. It just made them human.</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>